


When The Pieces Fall

by Probably_Not_Batman



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Dreambubbles, Gen, Ghosts, Other, sprite shit, wandering and wondering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24103657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Probably_Not_Batman/pseuds/Probably_Not_Batman
Summary: A sprite wanders through a crumbling universe, with only his thoughts left to him.Part of the @prototypedzine Sprite zine posted on Twitter!
Relationships: Eridan Ampora/ Sollux Captor (mentioned)
Kudos: 24





	When The Pieces Fall

You don’t know where you’re going, but you don’t think it matters. The space around you is empty and you’re far enough away now that when you look behind you, the planet you’d come from is a speck among the others. 

You take a breath you don’t need, your single fin flicking as you stare at it. You wonder if they’ve noticed your gone yet, if that stupidly cheerful human had come bounding up the path to where he usually saw you to ask you another ridiculous question. You wonder if he would be disappointed when he couldn’t find you, not that you’d been much help to him anyway. 

“How is this Hopey thing supposed to work anyway?” he’d said, staring at his palms as his pacing crunched dirt under his boots. It had taken you a moment to realize he was talking to you, your lip curling over your fangs. 

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” you had hissed, though his smile never faltered. Why did you always seem to be around unreasonably cheerful people? Curly hair and wide smiles flashed through your mind, the figure flickering between maroon and pink. Shards of memory taped themselves together and guilt twisted your stomach. You killed her. It was an accusation and admission all at once, the voices of your halves weaving through the memories.   
A different voice had caught your attention and you realized he was still talking to you. 

“Well. You were your sessions Hope player, right?” 

And look how that turned out. Again, you hadn’t been able to discern who’s voice it was. It was his and his and yours and your head hurt. You didn’t know if you liked it better when the two halves that created your being agreed or when they didn’t, not that either way made it easier for you to pretend the hastily pasted together shards of your mind were a single being. You were them but you were yourself and you really didn’t know which was the truth at this point. 

  
**ErisolSprite: Snap out of it**

You blink and shake your head, dragging your claws through your ghostly hair. The space around you is cold and empty in a way that almost makes you want to curl up smaller. All this room to exist and you want to somehow take up less of it. But you don’t. You tell yourself it won’t solve anything to sit in one spot until the planets that you can only see because you know they’re there are long gone, not that you know what you’re trying to solve in the first place.   
So, you keep moving. 

The first crack is soundless, but you can feel it in your chest and in the shiver down where your spine would be if you weren’t a ghostly game construct. The space above you shatters, a long crack of static and color through the void. You hang in the emptiness and stare, the doubly (heh) self-destructive part of you wanting to reach out and touch it.   
Memories flicker of standing at the roof of your hivestem, the water sparkling below the double moons. Your lusus nowhere to be seen and right behind you as you reach up, your stupid silly grub brain insisting that if you just reached a little further- 

The next crack is what finally makes you look away, watching the black turn to a web of cracks. You want to dive for it, to chase the edge of the universe that was falling apart and fall to pieces with it. 

Instead you slip back into the bubbles, following the bits and pieces that break away. You’re not the only one, it seems, if the ever-growing collection of ghosts marching below you is any indication. You see an infinite stream of your friends. Are you allowed to call them that? You’re almost sure you lost that privilege when you- when he-   
  
You hiss and search the crowd for a face that doesn’t make you want to curl up in your own tail and disappear. Instead you find your own a hundred times over, gold and violet with dead eyes marching toward the battle for the fate of a universe you’re trying to feel apathic about. They’re going to fail. 

They’re going to fail, and you know it so what’s the point in pretending differently? What’s the point when you can look at so many of you who have already died and know deep in your non corporeal chest that they’re going to die again. You want to scream about the hopelessness of it all, to dive down and tell them there’s no point, they’d only be watching their friends die again.   
  
None of them seem to notice you as you float closer, somehow feeling like more of a ghost than any of them. There’s a life to the way they march forward, a certainty that would bring you to your knees if you had any. They have something, hopes and plans even while they march through the deteriorating bubbles toward the end of all of you.   
  
They catch your eye near the front at first because you don’t expect them to be walking together, to be able to stand being so close when they weren’t forced to be. They seem comfortable with each other in a way you’ve barely come close to while sharing a brain and when you see their fingers intertwined you don’t know if you’re surprised or jealous at it all. Your hands clasp in front of you and you imagine it for a moment, violet layering over gold, warm and cold, thin and calloused over strong and ringed.   
  
By the time you look up they’re gone, vanished in the stream of ghosts. You let your gaze fall to the front and then further beyond. A crack you can’t see rings in your ears. Should you help? Should you fight?   
  
You search for the will you’d had before and find nothing, just game code churning between the apathy that kept you seated. You don’t have your highblood strength or weapons, don’t have your psionics, don’t have anything to offer except regret. You can’t help, can’t fight, can’t watch versions of them you never met die.   
  
So like the coward you are, you run. You run through bubble after empty bubble until you crash to an uncomfortably rocky surface. When you look up, you almost laugh at the irony of it all. The stone of the meteor surrounds you, the place where you ruined so much. Where you failed to protect anyone. It’s only fair you suppose, looking up to the clear space and the thin cracks you   
can see forming there.   
  
Your tail wraps around you like a nest as you watch the pieces of existence fall away, the shattered contentedness of your brain silencing the regret, silencing the pain. You’re a million miles from the fight, seeing the results in every new crack and somehow being at peace with it all.   
  
The universe crumbles around you.   
  
And you simply watch. 


End file.
